The finer point about online life that people probably are coming to understand as they gain experience is that some things from the real world may work better online — which does not detract at all from the fact that there will always be plenty in our lives that cannot get emulated as Web content at all.
Playing a New Game
We may see a day when certain communities in the real world elect to create local Webs in which the relationship between the actual physical place and its online presence abides by unique social contracts.
For example, imagine a certain community, perhaps a small town, that holds a consensus about certain environmental codes, including restrictions placed upon businesses with land-base shops or malls. In such a place, no business with outrageous power consumption and waste would be allowed to operate a brick-and-mortar retail outlet if the same commerce could be managed from a local website instead. Can you imagine how such a town might feel? No billboards, no ads, no strip malls or box stores or gaudy entertainment venues.
Certainly there are certain things that some communities (any community) might agree to outlaw in physical space, yet allow online in that province. This might even have the opposite effect by giving those communities a way to tolerate more of what people enjoy doing that may not meet with everyone's approval. This might include poker, other kinds of gambling, or club-type interest groups with narrow foci that may not fit in comfortably in town. The Internet might be rediscovered as a way to actually manage and execute democratic governance.
The Case of Entertainment
Since even in this day and age we still encounter fighting amongst people over what is decent enough for public spaces, the above use of local Webs does seem to provide a workable solution and perhaps even a remedy in places with heated disputes.
Entertainment is a particularly hot area for disputes over what is acceptable in terms of online media, as well as local performances or controversial products and services offered. Artists, whether pop or avant garde, usually push boundaries and push our buttons in the process. Other types of pastimes like gambling attract moralists who feel nobody needs the right to decide whether the thing is good or bad for oneself.
The Internet may be able to chill out such disputes by delivering satisfactory concessions to all sides. Whatever entertainment cannot muster a community's consensus regarding its acceptability in local physical space (it could be a video game parlor, or an adult bookshop, or, a small casino) might be relegated to online space at least for an interim, while public debate can happen.
The Virtual Casino Model
Already, as a matter of fact, land-based casinos are in the position to consider closing their monstrously wasteful casino complexes in favor of online gaming businesses instead. The states with regulated, legal gambling like California, New Jersey, Nevada and others with Indian Reservation-based casinos are clamoring onto the Web with virtual versions of their games.
In some cases, online casinos hold big benefits to players. For example, a sincere love for poker or blackjack can be satisfied online whereas it may be impossible to play otherwise. This also opens up certain games to underrepresented groups of players worldwide. Games like Roulette, before Web casinos arrived in 1994, had been the domain of the upper crust, who could afford the high-stakes rooms containing roulette wheels or other elite gambling games. Now, anybody can enjoy Roulette, even on a penny bet.
If you wouldn't mind following up this example by checking out some reputable online casinos, then you could survey http://www.classycasinos.co.uk/new-in-2015 for extra insight into the phenomenon. Strange to think it, but, Web-based casinos could be on the forefront of a powerful new trend when it comes to deciding what is best allowed online rather than within a localized community.
